


Finding Home In Her Heartbeat

by FairSappho



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Drabble, F/F, Femslash, GL, Girls Love, One Shot, One-Shot, Recovery, tw: brief and vague mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6588280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairSappho/pseuds/FairSappho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia never belongs.<br/>Until one day, suddenly, she does.</p>
<p>Trigger Warning of mentions of an abusive relationship, but it is very lightly referenced and no real details of the abuse are described. This is a drabble I was compelled to write about the healing process, and of course, about our two favorite literary little-sisters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home In Her Heartbeat

1.

The basement of the Bennet Household is cool and dark, and smells faintly of mildew. Amid boxes of baby pictures and old tax returns, young Lydia Bennet shuffles her feet. "But Liz-ziee," she pouts imploringly, "I wanna play too!".

"Lizzie," Jane starts, she twiddles her thumbs nervously, "Why can't Lydia play too? A school needs more than one student, right?" The chalkboard creaks, and Lydia thinks it sounds like judgement.

"Hmph!" Lizzies hair flies wildly as she turns around, she hops on a small box to gaze down at her youngest sister. "Sorry Lydie, you're too young to go to school. Go play with your dollies upstairs."

As she climbs the termite bitten stairs to the den, Lydia feels the sensation of carved-out hollowness in her gut for the first time, like a pumpkin prepped to become a jack-o-lantern. It's a shocking feeling, and she finds herself stuck on the last stair, looking out the door into the light.

Dizzy with the realization, Lydia thinks to herself _I don't belong here,_ and she aches.

2.

"Oh lucky me, I get to keep the boy-crazy, irresponsible substance abuser."

The shock of hearing her life laid out bare, painfully by her own sister stuns her. It knocks the air out her lungs, and it takes a moment before she can relax her shoulders enough to pull away from Lizzie without looking like she was burned. 

"Yeah."  

Her heart pounds painfully in her chest, but she pulls her face into a smile and changes the subject, forces her mind to go from _Shehatesmeshehatesmeshehatesme_ to the rumble of bass-enhanced stereo speakers and whirling bodies on wooden floors. She floods her head with memories of music so loud it drowned out any other thoughts in her head. But now a memory, it isn't enough to keep her sisters casual scorn from slicing through her heart. She smiles and laughs and thinks wildly, _I_ _don't belong here._

3.

It's 3AM and she's driving as fast as she can down a desert highway, with the windows down and the music turned all the way up so she can't hear the sobs trying to force themselves out of her chest. 

The sign says 'Las Vegas: 200 mi.' and she practically screams the lyrics of a song she can barely hear over the rushing wind. As the song ends, her mind races. She has to keep screaming if she wants to forget the look of confusion and realization on Lizzies face, the memory of that book burning her face red with shame.

Out of ideas, she screams the first thing she can think of out the window. It's not until dawn, when she's pulling off the freeway into a city of flashing lights that she realizes what she said.

_"I don't belong here."_

4.

The night is hot, and George is asleep beside her, naked with a hand thrown carelessly over waist. She is drunk and staring blindly at the blinking light of an idle video camera, and she can't sleep. She gently frees herself from George's grip and gets up, swaying. Her head pounds as she tries to be quiet, stumbling out onto the balcony of their shared hotel room.

She can't remember ever feeling this emotionally exhausted before, and her arm reaches involuntarily for the pendant around her neck. She's been repeating the words _I love him_ in her head like its a Buddhist mantra, but as she runs her fingers over the chain, her heart skips a beat as she thinks  _I don't belong here._

5.

It's over, she thinks to herself as she climbs the stairs to the basement with a small box in her hands. The video was taken down, its all over. She wills herself to relax but cannot. Her bed no longer feels like her bed, but her coffin. Her sisters no longer feel like her sisters, but her keepers. Lizzie is apologetic and _so so sorry Lydia, can you ever forgive me,_  and she treats her like glass. The world is staring at her and she is so distracted by her skin crawling, sitting in this dark, damp basement that she almost doesn't hear her phone trill in her pocket. 

It's an unknown number, and the thought of George makes the breath catch in her throat. _I don't belong here._ Its become her own personal mantra, a saying to block out all the rest of the hurt that threatens to overwhelm her. She opens the message and repeats _Idon'tbelonghereIdon'tbelonghereIdon't-_

It's Gigi Darcy. Her mind almost can't comprehend the words on the screen. She doesn't know how Gigi got her number, but she guesses it doesn't matter anyways. She reads the message three times before she understands it, and once she does, she lays down and sobs quietly in the silent company of hundreds of cardboard boxes.  
  


_"Lydia,_

_I don't have a way with words and this is probably going to come out all wrong, so please just humor me. But I want you to know that I'm not texting you out of pity, this isn't out of some misguided sense of guilt. I just want you to know that you will be fine. This is my cell number, please use it if you ever wanna talk. After he left me, I cut up all of the pictures I had of him, and made a huge collage dart board out of his face, if you're ever in San Fran, I'd love to see what kind of shot you are._

_Lots of love,_

_Gigi"_

When she gets up a good while later, she is dusty and humiliated, but there's a lightness in her chest that wasn't there before. She leaves the jewelry box with that necklace on the ground and makes her way back upstairs. She experiences a sort of deja-vu when she stops dead on the last step, surprised by her sudden thought, _What if I could belong there?"_ Shaking her head to dispel her oncoming hysteria, she closes the door behind her.

6.

"I wonder if we doused the darts in vodka, if we could set them on fire." Lydia muses as she leans over her beach chair to pour herself another drink.

Gigi throws her dart expertly, hitting Georges forehead with all the signs of an experienced marks-woman. She must have had a lot of practice, Lydia thinks.

"What, Kind of like a Viking funeral pyre?" Gigi trades her the next dart for the bottle. 

"Yeah." Lydia's aim is nowhere near as impressive as Gigi's, but she likes to think she's improved during her stay at Lizzie's new apartment. She still can't quite understand why her sister insists on having her own apartment when she's always staying at Darcy's, (William, she corrects herself. There's room for more than one Darcy in her head now.) But she supposes it's worked out just as well, since Gigi just stays with her here, lying on the roof with her, throwing darts just like she promised.

"We'd need a boat for that, wouldn't we?" Gigi asks. Lydia looks over at the girl who's quickly become her dearest friend, and feels her heart stutter in her chest. Arching a perfectly shaped eyebrow, the youngest Darcy reminds her of a Vogue model, hair blowing in the breeze, her shoulders bare and tanned from a day of sun. She smells like sunscreen and the sea, and Lydia forgets how to speak. The portable radio is playing the local college station quietly in the background, and when the she hears the Disk Jockey whine _"I don't belong here!"_ out of context, it jerks her back into reality. 

"Yeah, I guess."  she croaks.

"Maybe they have a small one at Big 5. I've still got a box of his clothes I never threw away." Gigi grabs her glass and turns to Lydia. "Cheers! To new beginnings." 

Lydia exhales, and then smiles, and raises her glass. "I'll toast to that."

7.

They had been skirting around casual touches and lingering stares for too long, so when Gigi pulls her into the coat room at Jane's wedding reception and kisses her, her only thought is  _finally._

The wedding itself had been strange for Lydia, like she could feel the end of an era. Her mother, sobbing beside her, turned to her halfway through Lizzie's Maid of Honor speech and tells her that one day, it will be her in the white dress.

This time, when she thinks _"I don't belong here"_ it's with a dark sense of amusement, a casual acceptance. Gigi is staring at her intensely from across the room, and when Lydia finally stares back, inclines her head towards the door. They barely made it to the coat room before they collapsed in on each other, hands roaming, panting in to each others mouths.

Neither of them either thought themselves gay, or even bisexual. But against the door like this, Lydia realizes that it never really mattered. They understood each other with an intimacy that transcends preferences or any internalized prejudices.

"It took you long enough." whispers Lydia, out of breath.

Gigi leans her forehead against Lydia's and smiles, and whispers "I know." back.

8.

Surprisingly, Lydia is the one to propose. Lydia, the party animal, the 'boy-crazy, irresponsible substance abuser' gets down on one knee at the Darcy-Bennet Family Christmas party, and Gigi beams through tears and whispers yesyesyes and everyone is smiling. And as her mother screams in joy and then passes out on the spot, and her fianceè holds her in her arms and kisses the tears of joy from her face, she has a wild, stunning thought.  
  
 _"I belong here."_

 

 


End file.
